Allez hop, un peu de conscientisation contre le consensus bien-pensant... là.
« Celui qui croit qu'une croissance exponentielle peut continuer indéfiniment dans un monde fini est un fou, ou un économiste. » Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993), économiste, président de l'American Economic Association
J'aime bien...
Un tiers de la population mondiale menacé par les conséquences de la désertification
LE MONDE | 04.09.07 | 15h30 • Mis à jour le 04.09.07 | 15h30
La désertification des terres progresse à un rythme alarmant. Aujourd'hui, 250 millions de personnes en subissent les conséquences, et un tiers de la population mondiale sera affecté à l'avenir si rien n'est fait. Ce constat sera au coeur de la huitième conférence internationale des 191 pays signataires de la convention des Nations unies sur la lutte contre la désertification, qui a lieu du 3 au 14 septembre à Madrid.
La désertification n'est pas un phénomène naturel, synonyme d'expansion des déserts. Le terme désigne la dégradation des terres arides ou semi-arides, qui perdent progressivement leur fertilité. Cette détérioration est causée par une mauvaise exploitation des sols (cultures intensives, surpâturage, déforestation pour gagner de nouvelles terres cultivables), et par une irrigation incontrôlée, qui peut aboutir à l'assèchement de cours d'eau ou de lacs. "La couche supérieure des sols, si elle est surexploitée, peut être détruite en quelques années, alors que des siècles ont été nécessaires à sa constitution", relève le secrétariat de la convention. Le réchauffement climatique, en accroissant les besoins en eau des sols et en modifiant le régime des pluies, aggrave le phénomène.
Selon les Nations unies, un tiers des terres émergées est menacé. Les deux tiers des terres cultivables pourraient disparaître d'ici 2025 en Afrique, un tiers en Asie, et un cinquième en Amérique du Sud. Les pays en développement ne sont pas les seuls concernés. Un tiers des Etats-Unis est affecté. En Europe, l'Espagne est particulièrement touchée : un tiers du pays est en voie de désertification.
MIGRATIONS DE MASSE
Les populations locales sont à la fois les agents et les premières victimes de cette situation. "La désertification est à la fois la cause et la conséquence de la pauvreté, relève le secrétariat de la convention. C'est la pauvreté qui pousse les habitants des zones sèches à exploiter au maximum les terres, les conduisant à privilégier leur survie à court terme, et ne leur donnant d'autre choix que d'agir au détriment de leurs intérêts à long terme."
"L'appauvrissement des terres est l'une des causes des migrations de masse, notamment de l'Afrique subsaharienne vers le Maghreb et l'Europe", explique Zafar Adeel, l'un des auteurs d'un rapport consacré par l'ONU à cette question.
Bien que le phénomène soit connu, et la gravité de ses conséquences mesurée, le problème empire. La convention des Nations unies sur la lutte contre la désertification, entrée en vigueur en 1996 et signée par 190 pays, a peu d'effets sur le terrain. Lancée au sommet de Rio, en 1992, elle a connu des développements bien moins favorables que les conventions sur le climat et la biodiversité.
Selon les Nations unies, les Etats concernés se désintéressent de la question, voire privilégient des politiques de développement économiques contraires à l'objectif. Pour expliquer cet échec, l'ONU cite également "l'insuffisance des financements consacrés (à cette convention) au regard des deux autres adoptées à Rio" ou "le manque de sensibilisation des divers groupes d'intérêts". La conférence de Madrid doit aboutir à un nouveau plan d'action sur dix ans.
Gaëlle Dupont
Article paru dans l'édition du 05.09.07.
La décroissance, y a que ça de vrai. 
Amen
F*** good news. Si même les think tank du grand capital disent que c'est du n'importe quoi...
OECD warns against biofuels subsidies
By Andrew Bounds in Brussels
Published: September 10 2007 22:28 | Last updated: September 10 2007 22:28
Governments need to scrap subsidies for biofuels, as the current rush to support alternative energy sources will lead to surging food prices and the potential destruction of natural habitats, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will warn on Tuesday.
The OECD will say in a report to be discussed by ministers on Tuesday that politicians are rigging the market in favour of an untried technology that will have only limited impact on climate change.
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“The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits,” say the authors of the study, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.
The survey says biofuels would cut energy-related emissions by 3 per cent at most. This benefit would come at a huge cost, which would swiftly make them unpopular among taxpayers.
The study estimates the US alone spends $7bn (€5bn) a year helping make ethanol, with each tonne of carbon dioxide avoided costing more than $500. In the EU, it can be almost 10 times that.
It says biofuels could lead to some damage to the environment. “As long as environmental values are not adequately priced in the market, there will be powerful incentives to replace natural eco-systems such as forests, wetlands and pasture with dedicated bio-energy crops,” it says.
The report recommends governments phase out biofuel subsidies, using “technology-neutral” carbon taxes instead to allow the market to find the most efficient ways of reducing greenhouse gases.
”Such policies will more effectively stimulate regulatory and market incentives for efficient technologies,” it said.
The study, prepared for the OECD’s round table on sustainable development, will be discussed in Paris on Tuesday and on Wednesday by ministers and representatives of a dozen governments, including the US. Also attending will be Ángel Gurría, the OECD secretary-general, scientists, business representatives and non-governmental organisations.
The survey puts a question mark over the European Union’s plan to derive 10 per cent of transport fuel from plants by 2020. It says money saved from phasing out subsidies should fund research into so-called second-generation fuels, which are being developed to use waste products and so emit less CO2 when they are made.
Today, only three kinds of biofuels are preferable to oil, the study says: Brazilian sugar, which converts easily to ethanol, the by-products of paper-making, and used vegetable oil.
The EU has said only biofuels that meet as yet undefined standards for sustainability will count towards its target to get a tenth of transport fuel from plants by 2020. Tariff discrimination on sustainability grounds is illegal under World Trade Organisation rules and the authors call for talks at the WTO to set up a global certification scheme.
Adrian Bebb, biofuels campaigner with Friends of the Earth said: “The OECD is right to warn against throwing ourselves headfirst down the agrofuels path.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Ici, un article assez fort sur les conditions sociales des agrocarburants brésiliens. C'est assez effarant.
La trad' en anglais est là.
Un article bien fait de The Nation sur la déforestation du Congo pour les parquets des bobos européens.
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071022/parenti
The Fight to Save Congo's Forests
by CHRISTIAN PARENTI, LAURA HANNA & HIDDEN DRIVER
[from the October 22, 2007 issue]
At the heart of central Africa's great rainforests lies Kisangani, a small city in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) some 1,300 miles from the mouth of the Congo River. The town began as a Belgian trading post, Stanleyville, and was Conrad's model for Kurtz's inner station in Heart of Darkness. No roads connect Kisangani to the rest of the world; over the past two decades they have all collapsed and been retaken by the jungle. Even river navigation is blocked beyond here, as a massive course of falls stretches for sixty miles upstream.
If the vast and isolated forests of the Congo Basin--the second-largest tropical woodlands on the planet--had a capital, it would be this sleepy city of crumbling colonial-era Art Deco buildings and empty boulevards. Down by the river women sell caterpillars to eat, but no one buys them. The sky is low and gray, but it never seems to rain. In the government buildings, yellow-eyed malarial old men sit in empty offices next to moldering stacks of handwritten files. There are no computers, electricity or, in many offices, even glass in the dark wooden window frames.
In a strange twist, this general dilapidation--the result of Congo's traumatic history--has inadvertently preserved Congo's massive tropical forests. First, Mobutu Sese Seko's thirty-two-year kleptocracy destroyed what infrastructure the Belgians had built. Then years of civil war and invasion by Uganda and Rwanda took an estimated 4 million lives, through violence and the attendant ravages of disease. All this chaos warded off the great timber interests. As a result the Congo Basin's massive forests--most of which lie within the DRC--are the world's healthiest and most intact.
An estimated 40 million people depend on these woodlands, surviving on traditional livelihoods. At a global level, Congo's forests act as the planet's second lung, counterpart to the rapidly dwindling Amazon. They are a huge "carbon sink," trapping carbon that could otherwise become carbon dioxide, the main cause of global warming. The Congo Basin holds roughly 8 percent of the world's forest-based carbon. These jungles also affect rainfall across the North Atlantic. In other words, these distant forests are crucial to the future of climate stability, a bulwark against runaway climate change.
But the isolation of the DRC's woodlands is ending. Since 2003 a massive United Nations mission has helped create relative stability, though several vicious and overlapping wars continue to gnaw at the country's eastern regions. Now most of the DRC is safe for logging. Over the past four years timber firms have set upon the forest in search of high-priced hardwoods. They control about one-quarter of Congo's forests, an area the size of California.
Blessed by the World Bank as catalysts of development, the companies operate largely unsupervised because the DRC lacks a functioning system of forest control. The government has written a new forestry code that requires companies to invest in local development and follow a supposedly sustainable, twenty-five-year cycle of rotational logging. But many companies ignore these stipulations; some have used intimidation and bribery; others log in blatantly illegal ways with no regard for the long-term damage they are causing.
And now the massive mahogany, afromosia, teak and wenge trees of Congo are making their way downriver, past the lower falls and over the sea to re-emerge as parquet flooring and lawn furniture in the homes of French, Italian and Chinese yuppies.
If these woodlands are deforested, the carbon they trap will be released into the atmosphere. Environmentalists say that if deforestation continues unabated, by 2050 the DRC could release as much carbon dioxide as Britain has in the past sixty years. On the ground, this would likely mean desertification, mass migration, hunger, banditry and war.
But an effort is afoot to halt Congo's plunder. "This is a make or break period," says Filip Verbelen, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace. "Logging is not helping the DRC's economy, and it is destroying the environment. The damage has to be contained now before it is too late."
Among the major timber firms in the DRC is an American company called Safbois, owned by a secretive family firm called the Blattner Group. The Blattners' other Congo-based businesses include construction, road building, telecommunications, aviation, trucking, port services and agriculture. The managing director, Daniel Blattner, splits his time between a Philadelphia suburb and the DRC, where his family has run businesses since just after independence.
The Blattners have operated in Congo for forty-six years. They purchased some of their best assets after the despotic Mobutu seized them from their Belgian owners. Environmentalists charge that Safbois is logging in violation of local agreements and national laws and with no regard for the well-being of people or the environment.
To investigate all this, I set out to visit Safbois's main timber concession, a 667,000-acre expanse of public land the firm gets to log. It lies near the town of Isangi, where the Lomami River meets the Congo. It is an area of tremendous biodiversity, home to 32,000 people, mostly subsistence farmers.
The first leg of the trip is a flight to Kisangani. I am carrying five forms of official documentation, yet the authorities insist I need more. The underpaid civil servants here toy officiously with the components of a defunct colonial police state, not for the sake of law and order but to demand survival-level bribes. When the authorization is finally ready, it is handwritten on old brown paper, but stamped and signed. On the verso is a typed document concerning veterinary medicine. It reads: "Congo Belge, District de Stanleyville, Secrétariat... 7 février 1957."
To reach the Safbois concession, a local guide and I ride motorcycles west from Kisangani along the Congo on trails that only twenty years earlier had been blacktop roads. The bridges are mostly washed away or blown up, so we cross each tributary by loading our motorcycles into dugout canoes. A continual string of villages unfolds, each composed of thatched-roof mud huts. At times the path is filled with a sweet floral fragrance and clouded with white and purple butterflies. Forests give way to patches of grassland, then clumps of bamboo and then more forest.
After a day of riding, a modern multistory brick building emerges from the wall of jungle greenery: we have arrived at the Institut Facultaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Yangambi. Built in the late 1960s with Belgian aid, the old forestry university at Yangambi is now closed; only a skeleton crew maintains the buildings. But the university still houses a huge biological archive: stuffed birds, pressed leaves, wood samples, 150,000 species in all. There's a dusty old lab, abandoned offices and, according to the watchman, "a cave where King Leopold liked to hide." But the Belgian King Leopold, who owned Congo as a personal fiefdom between 1885 and 1909, never actually set foot in Congo. The university starts to feel like a Surrealist's jungle amusement park, or a monument designed to mock Congo's pathetic lack of a real forest policy. It is the embodiment of everything that should be, but is not.
The next day we cross the Congo and ride deep into the Safbois concession to Baluolambila village. Along a flat stretch of road we stop to talk with a village chief. "This company came here just to cut trees, and from the beginning it has been nothing but lies, lies, lies," says the chief, Frédéric Makofi, as several men gathered around nod their approval. Chief Makofi wants clinics and schools and building materials and transportation. He says much of this was promised but not delivered.
The new Congolese forest code requires that logging companies draw up social responsibility contracts with the communities in their concessions--essentially the law asks the firms to set up company towns. Greenpeace, among others, has attacked this corporate-centered model because it undermines the state's responsibility to create a functioning system of social services. But in the Isangi concession, people say the Blattners won't even create a company town. They claim Safbois used intimidation to force through an agreement and then failed to deliver the promised schools and clinics.
"According to Section 89 of the forestry code, the company must build schools and clinics while they cut the trees. But they are only cutting," says Chief Makofi. He says the company gave the people some gifts and started construction on one school. "At first the people were happy that the company had arrived because they thought logging would equal development." But, Makofi says, it hasn't.
"We don't have any norms or restrictions to impose on the company. This is our first time dealing with anything like this. There are places that are sacred and the company has gone in to those places and cut trees there. Those trees they are cutting were helping us," explains Chief Makofi. "We want development in exchange." Like many people, Makofi thinks that a well-managed forestry policy could ensure that trees are replanted and allowed to grow while still providing enough timber and income to help raise the standard of living here--balancing environmental protection and development.
His complaints are echoed throughout the Safbois concession. In another village, a mile or two away, we meet a farmer named François Likungo. "There is nothing for our benefit," says Likungo. "And the forest has changed--all the animals have gone. We used to catch antelope and porcupine and possums in snares. But now the animals flee the noise of the machines. Before Safbois came we ate meat five times a month. But now it is just vegetables and cassava."
Two women standing nearby explain that childbirth is risky because the closest clinic has no medicine. School and medicine cost money, but this is an almost cashless society. Among the mob of kids clustered around are several with ringworm sores on their scalps and faces.
We ride farther in and soon the jungle opens onto huge smoldering clearings. Here another Blattner company, Busira Lomami, is clearing land for palm oil groves. It's a dramatic example of the chain of exploitation created by logging: first come the roads, and the companies take a few hardwoods; then on those roads come poachers, settlers and agricultural companies, and the deforestation starts to pick up speed.
At the Safbois compound--a cluster of trailers and mud huts surrounded by a stockade wall--I meet Kanzi, the company's chief engineer. Several months ago, when a Safbois official tried to sink a boat full of activists, a Greenpeace researcher and an Italian journalist were on board and filmed the event. The company came off looking thuggish, so now Safbois is on its best behavior. Kanzi stiffly but politely explains the situation from the company's point of view.
He says that there have been big misunderstandings. The company stopped building the one school after conflicts emerged between villages. The company is waiting for agreement from all the people in the concession before beginning to build schools and clinics in earnest. And he says that far from being exploiters, the company is harassed by environmentalists, who force it to tiptoe around the elephants, okapi and other exotic forest-dwelling animals.
According to Kanzi, tax collectors besiege the company. He offers a rather unimpressive example. "We had to pay $10 just to bring in 20,000 liters of gasoline here at our port. That is very expensive." He says, "The local people are happy to see us. But their friends and brothers, who have gone off to be educated, the intellectuals, they come back and excite the people to do bad things. They stir up trouble." When I ask how much they have logged, Kanzi snaps that it is none of my business.
After our interview I tour the logging camp with another foreman. A stoned police officer with a pet monkey on his shoulder wanders around, and in the distance one can hear chain saws. A harsh sun breaks through the clouds. The foreman explains that the workers are all from distant parts of the country. At the Safbois camp they and their families live in dirt-floored huts. The foreman tells me (and my little video camera) that the Blattners have not paid the eighty or so loggers here since April--five months ago.
To understand the local government's strange relationship of dependence on Safbois, I interview Crispin Kakwaka, the Administrateur de Territoire, at his office back in Isangi. Kakwaka describes the local government's appalling lack of resources. "We have nothing for forest control," he says. "The company gave us a few motorcycles for transportation, that is all. But we can't even inspect the amount of timber the company is sending downriver. We have to rely on whatever statistics they supply."
Coordinating opposition to Safbois is a small NGO called CAPDH. It survives on little grants, mostly from the Belgian government and UN civic education contracts it received during recent elections. Not quite a social movement or a social service organization, CAPDH is a network of about two dozen local intellectuals--part-time teachers, clerks, literate river pilots. Most, though not all, are men, and many of them studied for a few years at the provincial university in Kisangani.
"They [the police and provincial officials] forced the chiefs to sign the social agreement," says Delphin Ningo Likula, CAPDH's leader. "They surrounded the meeting and sent police after the chiefs who would not come to the meeting." Another CAPDH activist, Emmanuel Bofia, tells me, "The company hides logs in the forest, so the true amount they are cutting is not known. They cut trees in graveyards, trees in village meeting areas. They take the caterpillar trees. They are even cutting in the nature preserves deep in the jungle."
How does Safbois respond to these charges? Reached on his cellphone in Philadelphia, owner Daniel Blattner is irate. He denies that his firm is running amok in Isangi and explains away the villagers' frustration as follows: "We have a twenty-five-year concession, and we are building infrastructure as we go. We cannot--it is impossible--to build it all at once! We gave out plenty of support--over sixty bicycles, farming implements. They want 450 kilometers of road. By the time we leave, they'll have 1,000!"
About ten days after I left the Safbois concession, villagers, angry about broken promises and environmental damage, marched on the Safbois compound, pelting it with rocks. Police were called in and fired their guns into the air. Two protesters were reported injured. Days later, a survey party from a different timber firm was attacked near Isangi. The situation in the forest is tense. But to understand the forces driving these events, one must venture beyond the realm of villages, loggers, rough-edged timber camp managers and even comfortable Philadelphia-based capitalists like Daniel Blattner.
The real power behind the throne in Congo is the World Bank. It is the single largest lender to this hugely indebted government--$4 billion so far. In 2002 the government of Joseph Kabila signed a moratorium on new timber contracts. But the edict was contradicted by other new laws. Now the Bank is funding a complicated, painfully slow process of timber contract review. The government of the DRC will determine the legality and environmental impact of all 156 industrial timber concessions; tax cheats and despoilers will (in theory) have their contracts revoked. But so far the process is badly behind schedule. Meanwhile, the logging goes on.
In Kinshasa, I meet Kankonde Mukadi, the Bank's forest specialist. Why doesn't the Bank move forcefully to save Congo's forests? His response is high-minded flimflam: "This is a sovereign country. We can only make recommendations based on research."
Environmentalists laugh at this. Lionel Diss of Rainforest Foundation, Norway, was in Congo on a research trip and summed up the Bank's power thus: "If the Bank cut off funds to the DRC government and started imposing green criteria on new loans, and two or three of the most powerful embassies placed phone calls of concern to ministers, and European governments were ready with forest-conservation subsidies, things could be very different."
But in Congo, the Bank's hypocrisy knows no bounds: Despite its stated concern for the rule of law and sustainable forestry, its International Finance Corporation (IFC) is directly invested in some of the worst Congolese logging.
In mid-August the environment minister in Bandundu province impounded two barges of timber belonging to Olam, a $5 billion-a-year Singapore-based transnational corporation that the DRC accused of lying about the amount of timber it shipped, underpaying its taxes and using special "individual concessions" intended for small Congolese operators. The local government forced Olam to pay $34,000 in back taxes, plus some fines. Then in late August, Olam--still under pressure for what DRC officials say were numerous forms of environmentally destructive fraud--abruptly relinquished its two main timber concessions.
The World Bank, it turns out, had invested $15 million in Olam stock and in August still owned $11 million worth. IFC's spokesperson, Corrie Shanahan, was remarkably unfazed by the scandal. "Olam is a client of ours in several countries. We consider them to be a responsible company," said Shanahan. Asked if the DRC's legal actions against Olam were not grounds to reconsider the IFC's investment, Shanahan said, "We believe that Olam has good intentions, and I can't comment on the opinions of the DRC government."
To follow up on all these matters, I meet the DRC's minister of environment, Didace Pembe Bokiaga, in his mahogany-lined office. Behind his desk is a mounted water buffalo head and rising from the floor, two massive ivory elephant tusks. It's not the greenest image, but Pembe says the right things. "President Kabila is working very hard to root out corruption.... We have already recuperated 18 million hectares [of forest] for the state." This last is true, but most of it was land deemed unworthy of logging by timber firms.
"If these are the lungs of the planet, then the donor countries should subsidize us not to log most of it. But we need employment and we will have a sustainable forestry," says Pembe.
My faith in the minister is later shaken when an important timber executive tells how Pembe doubled the "area tax" on logging concessions, only to offer to undo the increase for a contribution of $300,000. The minister denies this charge.
Whatever the truth in this instance, Congo is still a kleptocracy; its massive civil service preys on every productive aspect of the economy. Transparency International rates it as one of the eight most corrupt nations on earth.
Corruption is a common complaint from the companies operating in the DRC, which also excoriate the government for its incompetence. The former general director of Safbois, Françoise Van de Ven, is secretary general of the DRC's main timber syndicate, the Fédération des Industriels du Bois. In her taut Flemish-accented English, she tells the familiar story of an industry under siege.
"This country is totally broken down. So we have to do everything. We build our own roads, run our own port facilities. You can't even get the normal large ships in the port at Matadi because the government has left it in ruins, undredged, no proper cranes. Everything is on the companies. And it is very expensive. At least 20 percent of operating costs goes to taxes. And what do we get? Nothing. And if we build the schools, which we do, will the government send teachers?" She pauses to take a drag on her cigarette and sip her latte.
Congo's culture of corruption extends even to many village chiefs. In one notorious case, a logging company called Safo provided cement, tin roofing, machetes, nets and other basic wares as part of its social contract. The materials went to village chiefs, but instead of hauling the goods to their communities, a merchant offered the chiefs cash for the supplies and resold the goods in nearby towns. Infuriated, the villagers blockaded roads, made threats of black magic against officials and clashed with police; several activists were detained, and one was beaten to death by cops.
The most cogent critic I met in Congo was Arthur Kepel.Born in Kinshasa, he was recruited into Mobutu's secret police, was later the chief of intelligence for the UN mission here and is now with the International Crisis Group. His summation of the Congolese political class--a group he knows well--is painfully blunt: "They worship money. You should ask them, What are they doing for Congo? You can't blame it all on the Belgians. What are these Congolese doing for their country now?" Not that Kepel spares the Belgians. "They owe a moral debt to this country. They plundered it."
When I ask him about the international community, he again counters with a question. "What international community? Do the Americans and French coordinate against corruption here? Or does each ambassador try to get the best position for their own national interest, build relations that help the companies from their country get better deals? What do you think?"
Are there any politicians in Parliament who are genuinely trying to protect the environment and create development? Kepel pauses, scrolls through his phone, gives me a number. "But I warn you. He doesn't shake hands."
The next day I meet the man in question, Ne Muanda Nsemi, Member of Parliament and spiritual leader of a sect called Bund dia Kongo. Last May 134 of his followers were massacred by Kabila's troops as they protested against dirty dealing in local elections. Nsemi wears yellow and white vestments and receives me at his simple compound in a hillside neighborhood of Kinshasa. He explains that around a distant star circles a planet called Kongo and that the inhabitants of the old Bakongo kingdom, which once ruled parts of western Congo, were descended from extraterrestrials and Ethiopians. The whole story involves a tsunami, sunken continents, migration from Australia and many other surprising details.
I wonder if this is Kepel's idea of a joke. Then I get in a question about forest policy. Suddenly the millenarian discourse gives way to nuts-and-bolts politics. "The international community should pay for conferences that can be broadcast to educate people about the value of the forest and about the law. In Parliament we need to cooperate across party lines." He says the DRC needs sustainable forest industries, scientific management of the resources and subsidies from industrialized economies to preserve the forest for the sake of climate stability. "This planet is getting warmer--everyone needs these forests."
The main Congolese environmental organization working to save the forests is a small NGO called OCEAN, which serves as the link between international outfits like Greenpeace and local community groups in the concessions. This nascent green movement is calling for an immediate halt to illegal logging, by which they mean most logging in the DRC. But they also say that the DRC needs to develop the rule of law if a logging moratorium is to work--a long-term project, to say the least.
If the forests are to be saved, there will have to be north-to-south subsidies--call them conservation concessions or climate reparations. Paying the DRC not to log is hardly without problems, such as the boundless corruption of local officialdom--but even despite this, subsidies could help to keep chain saws and bulldozers out of the forests.
The communities desperately trying to leverage funds from logging firms will need something else in order to survive. And if massive subsidies are good enough for the tidy gingerbread farmsteads of Germany, the pretty backdrops of France and for US agribusiness, then surely the richest economies can spend to save the wilds of Congo, upon which we all depend. If Congo is deforested, the impact will be grim--and global.
Tu m'épates Comandante. Dommage que je n'ai pas le temps de lire tout ça 
Scoubi dit:Tu m'épates Comandante. Dommage que je n'ai pas le temps de lire tout ça
moi je branle rien toute la journée et je fous pas grand chose toute la semaine, alors j'ai le temps.
El comandante dit:Scoubi dit:Tu m'épates Comandante. Dommage que je n'ai pas le temps de lire tout ça
moi je branle rien toute la journée et je fous pas grand chose toute la semaine, alors j'ai le temps.
welcome home
T'es mon gourou 
Maintenant que j'ai 5 minutes avant de terminer ma journée improductive, je vais lire un peu pour me culturer 
Scoubi dit:T'es mon gourou
attention, les gourous c'est un peu les prêteurs sur gage de Dieu...Bel article qui suit, où comment on utilise les oeuvres des peintres des siècles passés pour évaluer l'évolution des choses.
Là.
How old masters are helping study of global warming
Paintings of striking sunsets show effect of huge volcanic eruptions on climate
* David Adam, environment correspondent
* The Guardian
* Monday October 1 2007
The English landscape painter JMW Turner said his work was not to be understood but "to show what such a scene was like". Now global warming experts are taking advantage of his prosaic nature to improve their predictions of the consequences of climate change.
The scientists are analysing the striking sunsets painted by Turner and dozens of other artists to work out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions. By working out how the climate varied naturally in the past they hope to improve the computer models used to simulate global warming.
The team, at the National Observatory of Athens, is using the works of old masters to work out the amount of natural pollution spewed into the skies by eruptions such as Mount Krakatoa in 1883. Reports from the time describe stunning sunsets for several years afterwards, as the retreating light was scattered by reflective particles thrown high into the atmosphere. By studying the colour of sunsets painted before and after such eruptions, the researchers say they can calculate the amount of material in the sky at the time.
Christos Zerefos, who led the research, said: "We're taking advantage of the attitudes of famous painters to portray real scenes they were looking at. This is the first attempt to analyse this old art in a scientific way, and tells the story of how our climate has varied naturally in the past."
The results will feed into the scientific study of a phenomenon called global dimming, which is caused by air pollution blocking sunlight. Some experts believe this has acted as a brake on global warming, and that climate change could accelerate as air pollution from industry is reduced.
Professor Zerefos and his team looked at natural global dimming caused by volcanoes, the results of which can be severe. The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 threw out so much material that it triggered the notorious "year without a summer", which caused widespread failure of harvests across Europe, resulting in famine and economic collapse.
The team found 181 artists who had painted sunsets between 1500 and 1900. The 554 pictures included works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Gainsborough and Hogarth. They used a computer to work out the relative amounts of red and green in each picture, along the horizon. Sunlight scattered by airborne particles appears more red than green, so the reddest sunsets indicate the dirtiest skies. The researchers found most pictures with the highest red/green ratios were painted in the three years following a documented eruption. There were 54 of these "volcanic sunset" pictures.
Prof Zerefos said five artists had lived at the right time to paint sunsets before, during and after eruptions. Turner witnessed the effects of three: Tambora in 1815; Babuyan, Philippines in 1831, and Cosiguina, Nicaragua, in 1835. In each case the scientists found a sharp change in the red/green ratio of the sunsets he painted up to three years afterwards.
Writing in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the scientists say the redder sunsets seen in paintings "can be tentatively attributed to the volcanic events, and not to abnormalities in the colour degradation due to age, or other random factors affecting each painter's colour perception".
The scientists used the red/green ratios to estimate the amount of airborne dust produced by each volcano. The results, they say, are remarkably similar to estimates prepared from historical observations, early measurements and material found in ice cores.
Prof Zerefos's team is now talking to the Tate in London about repeating the study with 40 paintings from the 20th century, to see whether artists have captured the effects of pollution on sunsets since the industrial revolution.
Big bangs
1783 Laki, Iceland Volcanic eruption spread sulphurous haze across western Europe, killing thousands.
1816 Tambora, Indonesia Eruption killed 10,000 people directly and 66,000 due to starvation and disease during "year without a summer" that followed, when temperatures plunged and harvests failed.
1883 Krakatoa, Indonesia Loudest recorded bang in history. At least 36,417 people died. Average global temperatures dropped by 1.2C.
1991 Pinatubo, Philippines Killed 300 people. About 17m tonnes of sulphur dioxide went into atmosphere, reducing sunlight by 5% and global temperatures by 0.4C.
coucou
c'est-t-y qu'il faut obligatoirement est bilingue pour suivre les "infos environnementales" sur TT ???
J'ai laissé passer les premières en pensant que c'était temporaire, mais là je rage de ne pas pouvoir m'informer....restent, pour une simple frenchie, les synthèses du grenelle de l'environnement...............
Armelle
anemone dit:coucou
c'est-t-y qu'il faut obligatoirement est bilingue pour suivre les "infos environnementales" sur TT ???
J'ai laissé passer les premières en pensant que c'était temporaire, mais là je rage de ne pas pouvoir m'informer....restent, pour une simple frenchie, les synthèses du grenelle de l'environnement...............
Armelle
c'est juste que la presse anglophone produit plus de trucs sur le sujet, souvent plus fouillés d'ailleurs - pas dur - que la presse francophone. Que les réseaux d'infos sur le thème sont aussi principalement anglophones et qu'ils vont piocher dans leur environnement culturel. Point de snobisme ni d'élitisme, je prends les trucs là où je les trouve - et où je peux les lire - je ne suis que de plus loin ce que racontent les Allemands par exemple. Parfois Courrier International fait des trads, mais ils ne peuvent pas tout suivre et il y a souvent un délai... Désolé, je ne visais pas à l'exclusion.
quote="El comandante"] Désolé, je ne visais pas à l'exclusion.
[/quote]
je ne lai pas imaginé une seconde (..)
mais ces débats sur l'environnement m'intéressent à plusieurs niveaux étant "confinée" dans un milieu "alter" ....Mon anglais "scolaire" ne me permet pas de sentir les subtilités de tes citations
et puis...d'abord je te sais capable de les traduire tes sources, m'enfin...
>Armelle
je vais encore me faire taper dessus bicoz le langage , mais l'info est intéressante, même si déprimante : on pète le plafond de pollution qu'on devait avoir dans longtemps. Ca va plus vite et pire que ce que l'on pensait.
Le type dit que l'on arrive mi 2005 à une concentration de CO2 de 445 ppm (parts de CO2 par millions de molécules d'oxygène), niveau qui était plutôt attendu pour dans dix ans. Les gens de l'IPCC disent qu'au delà de 500/550, les changements globaux peuvent s'accélérer par effet de saturation des mécanismes régulateurs. Pour info, au début de la révolution industrielle, on était à 280 ppm (teneur "normale"); en 1957 à 311.
Un petit graphisme pour illustrer tout ca...
Greenhouse gas emissions hit danger mark
By Michael Perry
Tue Oct 9, 9:05 AM ET
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The global economic boom has accelerated greenhouse
gas emissions to a dangerous threshold not expected for a decade and
could potentially cause irreversible climate change, said one of
Australia's leading scientists.
Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and
Australian of the Year in 2007, said a U.N. international climate
change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have
already reached a dangerous level.
Flannery said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
report will show that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere in mid-2005 had
reached about 455 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent -- a
level not expected for another 10 years.
"We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade," Flannery
told Australian television late on Monday.
"We thought we had that much time. But the new data indicates that in
about mid-2005 we crossed that threshold," he said.
"What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in
the atmosphere is already above the threshold that could potentially
cause dangerous climate change."
Flannery, from Macquarie University and author of the climate change
book "The Weather Makers," said he had seen the raw data which will be
in the IPCC Synthesis Report.
He said the measurement of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere included
not just carbon dioxide, but also nitrous oxide, methane and
hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). All these gases were measured and then
equated into potentially one gas to reach a general level.
"They're all having an impact. Probably 75 percent is carbon dioxide
but the rest is that mixed bag of other gases," he said.
COLLISION COURSE
Flannery said global economic expansion, particularly in China and
India, was a major factor behind the unexpected acceleration in
greenhouse gas levels.
"We're still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels. You know,
the metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course, clearly,
with the metabolism of our planet," he said.
The report adds an urgency to international climate change talks on
the Indonesian island of Bali in December, as reducing greenhouse gas
emissions may no longer be enough to prevent dangerous climate change,
he said.
U.N. environment ministers meet in December in Bali to start talks on
a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change that
expires in 2012.
"We can reduce emissions as strongly as we like -- unless we can draw
some of the standing stock of pollutant out of the air and into the
tropical forests, we'll still face unacceptable levels of risk in 40
years time," he said.
Flannery suggested the developed world could buy "climate security" by
paying villages in countries like Papua New Guinea not to log forests
and to regrow forests.
"That 200 gigatonnes of carbon pollutant, the standing stock that's in
the atmosphere, is there courtesy of the industrial revolution, and
we're the beneficiaries of that and most of the world missed out," he
said.
"So I see that as a historic debt that we owe the world. And I can't
imagine a better way of paying it back than trying to help the poorest
people on the planet."
El comandante dit:je vais encore me faire taper dessus bicoz le langage
d'abord j'ai "râlé " gentiment, je ne suis pas violente, moi Môôssieu
ensuite je constate tes efforts
Enfin, c'est super d'accéder a ces infos pas très relayées
Alors merci d'être notre veille environnementale ailleurs et de nous faire partager (à tous...) ces infos ....déprimantes il est vrai mais pas très surprenantes
Je ne sais pas comment c'est ailleurs mais autour de moi après quelques frémissements de prise de conscience de l'urgence environnementale, j'ai l'impression que le mythe de la consommation et de la croissance repointe son nez...............peut être que ça rassure...........
Armelle
anemone dit:autour de moi après quelques frémissements de prise de conscience de l'urgence environnementale, j'ai l'impression que le mythe de la consommation et de la croissance repointe son nez...............peut être que ça rassure...........
Armelle
faut dire que si tu travailles plus pour gagner plus, ce n'est sans doute pas pour dépenser moins... Pas certain que la pensée archaïque soit en accord avec les nécessités du jour...
Pour info brute, n'ayant que survolé le dernier numéro. A vous de faire votre opinion:
Terra Economica :Le magazine francophone du développement durable
Qu’est-ce que Terra Economica ? Un savant mélange de journalisme indépendant "à la française", de curiosité pour le monde dans lequel nous vivons et de vulgarisation de l’économie et des enjeux du développement durable.
Terra Economica, le magazine du développement durable :
- Le constat :
L’économie, le social et l’environnement sont une des clés pour comprendre à la fois le monde dans lequel nous vivons et les enjeux du développement durable. Mais la presse économique, sociale ou environnementale est trop complexe et peu attrayante.
- Notre réponse :
1 - Terra Economica met l’économie, le social et l’environnement à portée de tous, avec des articles de fond, un ton moderne et des angles nouveaux.
2 - Terra Economica remet l’Homme et l’Environnement au cœur de l’économie. Car l’économie est au service de la société, et non l’inverse. Terra Economica contribue à la citoyenneté en incitant les lecteurs à se saisir des grands enjeux du développement durable : social, environnement, mondialisation, changement climatique.
Un magazine à la fois sur le papier et sur le Web :
- Terra Economica est publié le 1er jeudi du mois, soit 12 numéros par an. Le magazine est publié sur papier relié, comme n’importe quel journal. On peut également le lire à l’écran, ou en téléchargeant et en imprimant, chez soi ou au travail, la version PDF (qui est la réplique exacte du magazine papier). Pour télécharger un exemplaire du magazine,Cliquez ici
Une équipe de 30 journalistes :
- Rédacteurs, reporters, maquettistes, illustrateurs... L’équipe de Terra Economica, ce sont 30 journalistes issus de grands journaux nationaux, tous professionnels, qui enquêtent en France et sur les 5 continents. Pour découvrir notre équipe,Cliquez ici
Un journal indépendant :
- Terra Economica n’appartient à aucun groupe. Le journal est indépendant et vit principalement des abonnements souscrits par ses lecteurs.
Un journal qui veut montrer l’exemple :
- Le développement durable est-il un vernis marketing ou une nécessité ? Les journalistes de Terra Economica penchent pour la deuxième affirmative. Voici quelques-unes des actions que nous menons pour faire de Terra Economica un journal respectueux des hommes et de leur environnement...
Découvrez-nous librement :
- Vous souhaitez en savoir plus avant de vous abonner ? Nous vous proposons de lire gratuitement quelques articles ou de télécharger quelques éditions, pour vous faire votre propre opinion. Pour nous tester librement,Cliquez ici